


Hope Is What God Hangs You With

by oceaxe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/pseuds/oceaxe
Summary: “Please don’t tell me.” He finally looks up at Dean, eyes pleading. Dean is staring right back.“You don’t want to hear the words?”His lips thin into a trembling line. “No.”They both know. The knowledge hangs in the air like Damocles’ sword, glistening and sharp.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	Hope Is What God Hangs You With

**Author's Note:**

> I posted that Smut Ficlet Prompt list and Wigglebox gave me B3, "surprise visit at job/school/etc." I asked: canon or AU? They said canon, so here we are. I took liberties with the prompt to write this coda to The Trap. 
> 
> It's a lot less smutty and a lot more angsty than the prompt would seem to suggest, many apologies. 
> 
> Finally, I've barely written a word for months and this is unbeta'd and written pretty quickly, I think I've forgotten how words work.

Castiel is supporting himself on a tree trunk, breathing heavily in the wake of his escape from the last of the Leviathans, when he feels Dean wake up. It strikes him that he’s not sure how much time remains, and his heart beats hard at the thought that Dean might not make it back to the rift before it closes. 

One hand wipes sweat from his face as the other checks the blossom tucked safe in his jacket. Despite his exhaustion, he’s getting ready to go find Dean and lead him in the right direction, but his senses pick up on Dean’s orientation and momentum. They inform him that Dean’s on the move, not too far away and on the right track, so Castiel lets himself slump down against the mossy bark, roots rough against his thighs. 

He sighs in relief, feeling Dean’s approach in every cell of his body and sliver of remaining grace. Perhaps he can rest long enough to disguise how much the fight took out of him. His eyes slide closed.

Which, of course, is when Dean stops again. 

He jolts to alertness. The panic Dean’s broadcasting hits his solar plexus and bursts into a corresponding surge of adrenaline. He must have been swarmed. Fuck, he thinks as he staggers up again, ready to fight off another army of lamprey-faced morons. 

_Cas_ , comes Dean’s voice. _Cas, I hope you can hear me.... That wherever you are, it’s not too late._

The sickening wash of dread recedes. Dean’s fear is for Castiel, not for himself, so he must be alright. He wishes Dean could hear his inner reply. _I’m fine, it’s okay. Calm down, come here._

_I should have stopped you._

_Stopped him? From what,_ Castiel wonders. From luring the Leviathans away from Dean? _It was the only choice I had,_ he thinks, but Dean’s urgent voice breaks through. 

_You’re my best friend but I just let you go, ‘cause it was easier than admitting I was wrong._

A different kind of dread arrives. In addition to his efforts to chip away at Dean’s anger, Castiel has been chipping away at his own hope. His waning grace is leaving in its wake a fragile heart, and one that Castiel is aware needs protection. Freedom, he’s been realizing, isn’t the name of the rope that God wants you to hang yourself with. It’s hope - poisonous, resourceful, eternal hope. 

_Don’t give me hope, Dean,_ he thinks. An unfamiliar pit opens in his stomach, filled with winged creatures that are definitively not angels. 

The rest of the prayer spools out in Dean’s agonized voice, and Castiel dashes tears from his face. He listens while Dean confesses that he’s forgiven him, that he’s sorry it took so long to say. That he hopes Castiel is still around to hear him. Then he’s moving again, and Castiel waits. 

He’s just about regained his composure and strength when he hears Dean coming close. Once he’s averted getting shot, he stands and gives his sit rep. When he produces the flower, Dean looks at him like he’s hung the moon. 

“You did it,” he says, and joy flows through Castiel’s veins. But now Dean is trying to say something more, something that Castiel cuts off. 

“I heard you,” he says, and while it’s true, it’s not the whole truth. 

He turns towards the rift, unable to keep looking in those eyes, brimming with something he could drown in. The spell. They must do the spell. There’s no time for anything else, and besides. 

Besides. 

He’d made a deal. 

Dean follows him, and they do what they must do. 

* 

He and Dean stay at the table in the kitchen after Sam leaves, Dean nursing his whiskey like it’s the last dram on earth. Castiel feels Dean’s eyes on him but doesn’t know what he’s hoping to find written on his face. The apology in Purgatory was pierced with huge gaps, a lacework of truth and omissions. 

He should go to his room, but he can’t leave until Dean says whatever he’s rolling around in his mind. 

“Cas,” he finally gets out. “I wanted to say something, back there. It wasn’t about the apology.” 

Hope leaps like a wild thing in Castiel’s chest, colliding with the cold, hard memory of the fate he sealed in heaven. 

“Don’t. Leave me room to doubt,” he says, his voice rough. “I can’t - I can’t tell you why but it’s important to leave me room.” He stops, chest heaving with the things he can’t say, can’t. “Please don’t tell me.” He finally looks up at Dean, eyes pleading. Dean is staring right back. 

“You don’t want to hear the words?” 

His lips thin into a trembling line. “No.” 

They both know. The knowledge hangs in the air like Damocles’ sword, glistening and sharp. 

“Then I won’t say it with words.” He leans forward, over the corner of the table. He leans in, and there’s nowhere to go. 

As soon as their lips touch, it’s out of Castiel’s hands. He can’t slow them down; his pulse is pounding, everything throbs. He takes what Dean gives him and gives it back threefold. He tells himself he can’t be sure that the symphony of meaning beneath these desperate kisses translates into the sweetest four letters he knows. He tells himself the chemistry between them was bound to lead to this, once the dam broke. It’s just our bodies, he lies and he grasps Dean around the shoulders, pulling him in. 

Dean straddles him, making the stool creak with their weight. It could collapse under him and Castiel’s not sure he would notice. This kiss burns him, scours his imagination of any previous attempts to imagine it. If this is all he gets, then he’s going to get it all. 

His hands move down Dean’s back, feeling corded muscle that shifts as Dean gets a better grip on Castiel’s neck, his hip. Their mouths slide hot against the other, their bodies create a friction that is unbearable. 

All at once, he grabs Dean around the waist and forces them both upright. “Your room,” he growls, and pushes Dean towards the door. Dean nods dazedly and goes, Castiel on his heels. He crowds Dean as they stumble towards Room 11, wondering how humans withstand this terrible urge, this drive to join. He now knows he’s only ever read the menu; he’s never tasted real food. 

Over the threshold now, the door slammed shut behind them, Dean turns around and opens his mouth. Castiel covers it desperately, anger and misery and elation a seething mix inside him. He turns it on Dean, stripping him with a haste that would be brutal in any other situation. Dean’s eyes are closed, his breathing fast, his chest flushed. His cock is hard, and Castiel takes it in his hand. 

“Shhhh,” he murmurs into Dean’s mouth as he feels the length and heft of it. They’ve always seemed comical before, erections. They don’t any longer. The heat of Dean’s cock burns his palm, velvety skin over impossibly hard flesh. His head swims with the longing to taste but Dean stops him from sinking down. 

“You,” he says, pulling at Castiel’s coat, yanking it down. Then his fingers are fumbling with the buttons of the shirt, and Castiel helps by tearing it off completely, ruining it. Maybe he’ll wear Dean’s t-shirts now. Maybe the Empty will claim him. Who fucking knows, but that shirt is gone and Dean’s mouth is on his chest and he couldn’t care less about what he’s going to wear when they’re done. 

He walks Dean backwards to the bed and falls on him, almost slapstick, except no one’s laughing. Dean looks up at him, a tormented kind of wonder on his face, which Castiel knows is reflected on his own. So beautiful, this man. There are no words. Castiel could only ever write it in the music of the spheres, the intricate dance of transmitters and receptors. How in heaven’s name have they resisted this all these years? It doesn’t seem possible. 

Dean’s hands are working at his belt, the fly of his pants. As soon as he’s freed, those hands pull him down and then, oh then. 

Time stops, blessedly. But it starts again, once they’ve given each other what they have to give. 

He gives thanks to whatever impersonal forces continue to make the universe tick along like a clock whose maker has long since lost his marbles. The weight of their unsaid words twists in his heart, makes Dean frown instead of smile at him as he wakes. 

They have work to do, and Castiel will be here to do it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks for reading!


End file.
